Packet anonymity is the problem?

Sun Apr 11 18:45:40 UTC 2004

Petri Helenius wrote:

>
> Joe Provo wrote:
>
>> I have heard the 'assymetric cost/benefit' rationale for the
>>
>> bad laziness (sloppiness, not the larry wall-esque 'good' laziness of 
>> automation) on and off the last few years. Similarly, I have heard 
>> about the tremendous cost of sloppiness and human error in terms of 
>> root-cause for networking badness for the past several years.
>>
>>  
>>
> Maybe there should be more "neighborhood intelligent" worms which 
> would target resources that are within the vicinity of the compromised 
> host. SMTP, WWW, etc. services. That way the effects would be most 
> devastating for the lazy.
>
> Pete
>
>
That raises what some would call an interesting veiwpoint (not my own)

Since there will be a worm for X written by "bad" people, and the worse 
the worm, the faster the "lazy" administrators patch......

Therefore the "good" people should beat the bad people to the punch and 
write the worm first. Make it render the vulnerable system invulnerable 
or if neccessary crash it/disable the port etc..... so that the "lazy" 
administrators fix it quick without losing their hard drive contents or 
taking out the neighborhood.

Such "corrective" behavior as suggested by you might also be implemented 
in such a "proactive" worm.

How many fewer zombies would there be if this was happening?

Clearly the current model is not working.